Singing road’s encore
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As if there weren’t already enough funny noises coming from the underbelly of your car, starting today, you can again hear the ‘William Tell’ overture when you drive over a strip of road in Lancaster.
The city’s first strip of singing pavement was constructed for a Honda ad in September. It used strategically placed grooves -- similar to rumble strips on highways -- spaced so that a series of pitches resembling Rossini’s famous composition played when a car drove over the road. But neighbors complained about the strange noises and the crazy behavior of the people driving in the area. So Lancaster covered over the grooves after 18 days, rather than 18 months as originally planned.
The city vowed to construct a new road, and Mayor R. Rex Parris said that corporate sponsors were jockeying to pay for it. But the new road, on Avenue G between 30th and 40th West, doesn’t have a sponsor’s name on it. That’s because Honda didn’t want another company’s name on the road they pioneered, said Bob Green, interim director for Lancaster’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Department. Sponsors will instead pay for special events and programs having to do with the road, he said.
The new singing pavement won’t cause the same problems as it did before, he said, because it’s on a three-lane road in a less residential area. “There are no houses nearby,” he said. “And it actually sounds much better than it did previously anyway.”
-- Alana Semuels
Photo: Steve Bao
